What does suffix "-ture" mean?

Lots of words end in the suffix "-ture", but I can't find a consistent meaning of this. Is -ture a root or a suffix or something? example words:
creature, feature, future, culture, indenture, capture, fracture, picture, literature

Answers

-ure, suffix
A suffix, repr. French -ure, Latin -ūra (hence Italian, Spanish, Portuguese -ura), occurring in many words of French or Latin origin. In Latin -ūra primarily denoted action or process, hence result of this, office, etc.; after further development in French, the use was extended in English, and denoted action or process, the result or product of this (e.g. enclosure, figure, picture, scripture), function, state, rank, dignity, or office (e.g. judicature, prefecture, prelature), a collective body (e.g. legislature), that by which the action is effected (e.g. clausure, closure, ligature, nouriture), etc. Many words were adopted from French at an early date, as figure (a1225–), scripture (a1300–), nouriture (c1374–), censure, closure, investiture, juncture, pressure, tonsure (1380–), fissure, scissure (c1400–), etc.; while a few others, as clausure (1398), plicature (1578), mercature (a1620), aperture (1649–), were directly adapted from Latin. The suffix was also added to English stems of Latin origin, giving composure (1599–), disposure (1569–), exposure (1605–), or to true Latin stems, whence vomiture (1598), †beneplaciture (1662), ructure (1657–69), unigeniture (1659–); and was further used with stems of Romance origin, as in †bankrupture (1617–22), †disembogure (1653), †praisure (1622), and with native or other bases, as in †clefture (1545, 1596), †raisure (1613, 1677), and wafture (1601–). To this form various French suffixes (as -eure, -ir, -or, -our) have been assimilated in English, as in pleasure, soilure, †trap(p)ure (trapper n.1), treasure, velure.

RE:
what does suffix &quot;-ture&quot; mean?
Lots of words end in the suffix &quot;-ture&quot;, but I can&#39;t find a consistent meaning of this. Is -ture a root or a suffix or something? example words:
creature, feature, future, culture, indenture, capture, fracture, picture, literature

First of all, I think you make a good point; societal practices are only trivial if they can be easily reversed without having much of an effect on society. However, there is something called 'societal inertia'. Social practices are really hard to change once they get started. For example, take really simple practices, like the practice of saying "bless you" when someone sneezes. Or the practice of saying "thank you" when someone gives you something. These phrases seem trivial, and they seem like they would be easy to change, but they aren't. Even if you say something more reasonable like "I hope you get better" (when someone sneezes) they're still going to think you're weird. Given that social conventions are so hard to change, I would instead argue in favor of adopting gender-neutral pronouns. For example: - Police Officer - Fire Fighter (which makes more sense anyway, since Fire men don't cause fires) - Chairperson - Layperson - Mail carrier (which also makes more sense, since mail men are not made of mail, but instead are carriers of it). If we can't change the phrases to be more egalitarian then I'm with you; we should change the terms so that they favor the section of the population that has historically been oppressed. This would at least bring us closer to equality than we are now.

Kendrick seems to have said everything I was going to say. I'll just add that the Latin word 'humanus' also contains the word 'man' in it but is used to refer to all mankind. Also I don't see anything wrong with using terms like 'chairwoman' or 'policewoman'. That's just evolution of language at work. But I would also like to point out that words do not innately come with meanings. Instead their meanings are lent to them by humans. I don't see words like 'human' or 'Mann' in German or 'fireman' as being sexist simply because they contain the word 'man'. Words get their meanings from humans, not the other way around. That means that anyone at anytime can see these words as sexist simply because they want to. However, the words come with no baggage other than that which we allow ourselves to grant them. It's all a matter of perception. As a technical side note I do not believe that the word 'men' is a suffix rather it is a lexeme of a compound word. It's sort of like the word 'basket' in the compound word 'basketball'. "After all, it apparently doesn't matter and isn't a big deal that we use "- men" or not: "- men" means both "men and women." If this is so, then "- women" must also mean "men and women" - or has the capability to refer to the universal - as well.". I tend not to agree with this (though again this could change with time) because of the way the word is used. Though in English we don't have any English gurus we can go to, like they do in Spanish for example, words still have a common meaning. Women refers to only female humans. Men refers to both just men and 'women and men' (i.e. all of humankind) due in part to it's historical origins. So: If Man -----> (Male) v (Mankind: including both males and females) If Woman -------> (Female) This could change given that languages are constantly evolving even as we speak but for right now this is the way the words are used.

I honestly couldn't tell you-in fact a lot of those words I don't think have anything to do with ture...For example, capable is a root word, which goes with capability, or incapable. What you're saying is capture goes with them, but capturing and being capable are the same thing...which they're not.

I'd just venture to say, like above that it's just simply the spelling.